Common ice skates used in skating have an elongate blade which is arranged to slide along the ice surface. Attempts to minimise the friction between the blade and the ice using the application of heat to the blade are shown a number of prior US patents as follows:
U.S. Pat. No. 3,119,921 (Czaja) issued Nov. 2, 1962 discloses a resistant heating element attached as a folded resistance heating element wrapped over a top of the blade of a skate so as to apply heat along the side surfaces of the blade. A battery is mounted in the open area above the blade underneath the connection of the blade to the boot.
U.S. Pat. No. 3,866,927 (Tvengsberg) issued Feb. 18, 1975 discloses a similar arrangement where the blade is mounted in a molded holder extending from the blade to the sole of the boot. The blade may be optionally heated in which case a resistance heating element is applied apparently along the side of the blade although this is not adequately described.
U.S. Pat. No. 5,441,305 (Tabar) issued Aug. 15, 1995 discloses a heating system primarily for skis which appears to be speculative in nature and includes a number of different arrangements which could be used. In FIGS. 6 and 7 is shown the heating of a skate blade where a resistance heating wire is apparently buried inside the structure of the skate blade itself. No detail is provided as to how this might be manufactured.
All of the above patents therefore show resistance heating elements but in each case the structure is clearly speculative and no detail is provided. No product of this type has been commercially available.
U.S. Pat. Nos. 6,669,209 issued Dec. 30, 2003, 6,817,618 issued Nov. 16, 2004 and 6,988,735 issued Jan. 24, 2006 all by Furzer and all assigned to the present assignee disclose various arrangements of heated skate blade where a battery is located in a tower of the skate support attached to the skate boot and supplies power to a heating device on the blade. In this case the heating element is in the form of a transistor which fed with current in a mode so that the transistor generates heat with the transistor communicating that heat to a side of the blade or through a separate insert of high thermal conductivity.
This application relates to the subject matter disclosed and claimed in co-pending applications Ser. No. 11/780,577 entitled HEATING ARRANGEMENT FOR ICE SKATE BLADES (corresponding to Canadian Application INSERT) and Ser. No. 11/780,580 entitled MOUNTING ARRANGEMENT FOR ICE SKATE BLADES (corresponding to Canadian Application INSERT) all filed 20 Jul. 2007 by the same applicants and assigned to the same assignees, the disclosures of which are incorporated herein by reference.